


as our fathers before us

by Ias



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Daddy Issues, Dark, Dubious Consent, Emotional Manipulation, Father Figures, M/M, Pseudo-Incest, Terrifying Tolkien Week, but no actual incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-01
Updated: 2015-11-01
Packaged: 2018-04-29 06:53:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,065
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5119178
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ias/pseuds/Ias
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You have found the place where the armor is already dented—it’s so easy to press, and watch the metal buckle.</p>
            </blockquote>





	as our fathers before us

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Margo_Kim](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Margo_Kim/gifts).



> So this is possibly the most genuinely evil fic I’ve ever written? Long story short, it came to me when pondering how Annatar might gain Celebrimbor’s trust (besides the tried and true method of friends-to-lovers-to-holyshityou’resauron), paired with all the unresolved issues Celebrimbor would have with his father and how Annatar might exploit them. Suffering ensues. 
> 
> Big thanks to [Margotkim](http://margotkim.tumblr.com) for making me sit down to write this in the first place, and then beta-ing it at that.

It is not such a challenge. Over the time you spend together, Celebrimbor reveals certain facts about his father. You remember these details. And then, when enough time has passed to avoid suspicion, you copy them. 

“Well done,” you say as the pair of you successfully complete the complicated setting of a necklace. It has been years since you arrived at Eregion; decades, when you reflect on it. You both have rhythms you fall into now, familiar beats set to your tune.

Celebrimbor does not look at you: his eyes are on the work you forged together. “My father taught me how to do this.” His voice is soft, but it does little to disguise the harder sentiments that lurk beneath it. “It took me weeks to create a molding to his satisfaction. He was not patient with failure.”

“Was he cruel?” A shiver dances behind your words, one you cannot hold back.

Celebrimbor’s eyes stare out into nothing and then through it, as if he can look back on every petty injustice and inspect them like slabs of meat at the butcher. “I don’t know. I never knew anything else.”

You smile in the way you know will be effective—a faint curve of your lips paired with a lowering of the eyes, as if some softer emotion is seeming through the facade without you realizing it. You practiced it in the looking glass this morning. “I recommend working the metal like this—it lets you get more delicacy in the ornamentation. Here…”

You usher the moment past, returning to the comfort and familiarity you’ve worked so hard to cultivate. But you don't forget the twitch in Celebrimbor’s fingers when speaking of his father, the hardness in his jaw like a rotten tooth. You have found the place where the armor is already dented—it’s so easy to press, and watch the metal buckle.

Gaining his trust is not the end of it. Though of course, that is the main objective. All the little mannerisms you adopt—the dosed-out hints of approval or disappointment, the presence you wield over him when you enter a room—they are sleights of hand, directing his attention from where it should not be. You’re quite good at molding the impressions people form of you, shaping their regard like white-hot metal in the forge.

But this case Celebrimbor’s regard is not enough. And neither is his sex, though you know you need only reach out to take it. His trust is hard won, but once you have it he looks at you as if through a haze of smoke, as if the air is thick and close and you are the furnace-glow to turn silver into molten tears. You could make him desire you. It would be very easy indeed to take that respect and _twist_ , to turn one touch into another until you have Celebrimbor mewling and spread out beneath you in bed.

Your eyes follow the line of sweat that slides beneath the collar of his shirt. You will have him. But not like that. You have already decided that each ounce of pleasure you give him will be mingled with its equal in shame.

And so you work. A touch on the shoulder after a job well done, a gentle correction where a firm one might be expected. Celebrimbor looks up at you with cheeks flushed from the forge after you both navigate a successful experiment, and in the moment that could have led to a kiss you reach out to tousle his hair. In time, you watch the way that Celebrimbor begins to defer to you without realizing it, the quick flash of a glance to see if you approve, if you are watching. It has taken all your skill to strip away his defenses, peeling back the mistrust and the self-protection to leave him bare and open. And what you are left with is this: a child looking up to his father in the forge with equal parts admiration and fear. It is a form of worship, what sons hold for their fathers. You will make him worship you.

It happens one evening in the forge. You sit together in companionable silence, a silence which you patiently wait for him to break. You relish every moment of it, every glance warm with the relief of belonging, of acceptance, because each of those victories is another band of iron around Celebrimbor’s flesh. Soon you will tighten them. 

He speaks.

“My father was… distant. Though not always—perhaps it was better when he was. The weight of his disappointment was the worst burden to bear. Even after we were estranged, after I saw the darkness in him—I still couldn’t quite shake the feeling that everything I did was somehow for him. ” Celebrimbor glances over at you, a wry smile contorting half his face. The embers of the forge lay reddish light across his cheek, cast parts deep into shadow. “I’ve tried to edge out from the shadow he cast over my life. But things still feel colder where I stand.”

“Fathers do have a way of leaving their mark on us,” you say. The words are thick and tasteless on your tongue. It seems for a moment you stand in a different forge, in a time before your becoming. Or perhaps you are nowhere at all, suspended in darkness and absence with the sweet, faint melody of your creator threading slowly through your being like water over arid ground. You force your eyes back to Celebrimbor and pull the inferno in them deeper within you. He will perceive only a reassuring warmth.

“I’m grateful to have you here,” Celebrimbor says at last. “You’re a better teacher than he ever was.”

Your next question is carefully weighed, parceled out in hesitant syllables that betray no hint of your excitement. “Do you ever see him in me?”  

Celebrimbor looks up sharply. “No.” The word is spoken too quickly to be convincing. He knows this—he hears it in his own voice. “Well,” he allows softly. “Perhaps in some ways. Sometimes, these little things…”

He shakes his head as if trying to clear a fog that has settled behind his eyes. Inside you are squirming with the deliciousness of success. You’re so fond of him in that moment, from the quirk in his lips to the tired cast of his eyes—you want to cup his face and hold his gaze with paternal warmth, to stare back at the trust that will well up there as if observing it through a pane of glass. You can scarcely wait to sour the regard he holds for you and press the cup to his lips, knowing he will tell himself the taste is still sweet.

The smile that threatens to come out a dripping with irony turns to understanding at the last minute. You reach out to squeeze his shoulder in that intimate way, lending strength and support. “I’m not him, Tyelpe.”

Celebrimbor nods. There’s a firmness, a sense of decision, that wasn’t there before. It seems that he has looked at you and made up his mind. “You’re right. You’re everything he should have been.”

It’s then that you know he is ready.

On the night which you have decided to do it, you invite him to your quarters. You count the glasses of wine; you have a few yourself. After all, it’s a special occasion.

“So what’s all this for?” he asks with a grin. You merely smile. As the evening wears on his eyes grow more lidded, his limbs looser; you sit beside him, sharing in his warmth, admiring the flush in his skin. You resist the urge to skim a finger over it, to sample the sweat and heat under your fingertips. Not yet.

“You are drunk, Tyelpe.” The words come as a mild chastisement, equal parts encouragement.

Celebrimbor laughs, lifting this glass beneath reddened cheeks. “And who’s to blame for that, with all this fine wine you have lying about? Someone ought to drink it.”

“I suppose you deserve some relaxation. We’ve done such great work together.” You raise your hand to the goblet he holds, letting your fingers slide over his as you gently take it from his hands. He allows it to go, watches as you set it on the table beside him. Even when you lean into his space to do so, his eyes remain innocent of your intentions. Celebrimbor is not naive, and neither is he a fool. And yet in this moment he is both of those things, because of what you have made him believe. Long after this, he will blame himself.  That is the sweetest of all.

Celebrimbor graces you with a smile that has travelled through years of suffering, the way distance makes the starlight cold. “I couldn’t have done it without you, Annatar.”

“Perhaps not. But you have exceeded my expectations.” You lean in and clasp the back of his neck with a firm hand, as if you are friendly, as if you are fond. “I’m very proud of you.” And that’s when you kiss him.

You feel his muscles go rigid. His lips beneath your own are slack—the tug of earth beneath him has faltered, the world has reversed itself and now only he is backwards. When you pull back his expression is cracked open and spilling confusion, studying your face as if searching for the person he had thought you were, the person who disappeared as soon as your lips touched his. Oh, how you have worked for this.

Idly you drag a thumb over his cheekbones, leisurely, without hesitation. “I’ve been thinking about this for a long while.”

You see him struggling to reconcile this. To re-categorize all the looks, all the touches, into something he had known they were not. All the times he trusted you so implicitly because he thought he understood you. 

Haltingly, he opens his mouth. “I thought—“

“What did you think?” Your voice, a note of sternness. It does the trick.

Of course he cannot say it, cannot put to words. He merely stares at you, mouth ajar, that endearing little dip nestled between his brows. And so you kiss him again, and this time he responds, slow and clumsy with the great effort forced behind it. As your touches grow more insistent you can feel the hesitation, the confusion. Poor Tyelpe doesn't want to be a disappointment, doesn't want to deny you anything. And you won't be denied. You see Celebrimbor try to adjust, try to forget the careful structures you have worked so hard to build in him. He struggles to please without knowing he does so. And if your hands sliding down his chest twists something in his gut, if your lips on his neck make a shudder travel down his spine—well, he will write them off as his own misjudgment. He will tell himself that this was what he wanted all along.  

And it’s then you start your finest work, teaching him the crafting of rings with a firm and wandering hand. You enjoy it all the more for seeing how your dear Tyelpe is eaten up inside, wanting to want you if not for his father’s ghost lurking beneath your skin. Your touch shrivels against his skin—he leans into it because he loves you, though not the way he thought he did. And so you begin to ignore him, to demean his accomplishments, to speak harshly when he fails. If you had simply taken him as a lover such actions would have estranged him. But now you get the exquisite pleasure of seeing him crumple like the balled-up scraps of parchment, the designs he no longer believes in.

And then, after you have abandoned him, when years have slid by and the One shines like a beacon on your finger, you will face him again—here on the steps where you lingered so long, a kind hand on his shoulder, the unspoken promise to protect him hanging between you. This time you disarm him with a cruel flick of your wrist that paints a red line down his arm and sends him to his knees. You stand over him, the smoke of his burning city billowing behind him, and you smile that paternal smile.

“Oh Tyelpe. Ever you disappoint me.”


End file.
